EDITOR'S NOTE: What follows is an installment of an occasional blog-extension series. When threads get too long for The Corner, NRO's main group blog, we take them "Out of The Corner."
John Derbyshire writes:
Ramesh—“That's why he’s in a stand-off with Justin Katz. Derbyshire suggests that it’s pointless for Katz to raise objections to eugenics, since people are going to practice it whatever he says. When Katz points out that people are going to practice it collectively, too, Derbyshire falls back on . . . the force of the arguments he will make when that day comes.”
I wasn’t aware that I was in a stand-off with Justin. He passed a remark on my post; I passed a remark on his post; then we both got involved with other things. That’s a stand-off? Perhaps I missed something. Anyway, I not only believe that private citizens are going to practice “consumer eugenics” whatever Justin says, I think they *ought* to be able to. Or: I see no reason why they should be stopped from doing so, in a free society. And, of course, they already are, via genetic testing & selective abortion. This is not at all to be equated with your use of “collectively”— i.e. government action. Private citizens should do as they please unless they are doing something antisocial. Governments should do what we—we, the people—permit them to do. We are the masters of our government, not its slaves. There is no equivalence here between private action and government action. I do not think we should permit govt. to create a new “right” to funds from the public fisc to pay for genetic intervention for those who can’t afford it, and I shall not be in want of new arguments “when the time comes.” The necessary arguments are implicit right here in what I am saying. I *do* think private citizens should be able to buy intervention for themselves, if they are so inclined and can afford it. I stand by liberty, free choice, and popular government. I stand against bossy bureaucrats and authoritarian zealots telling me what I may do with my life, my body, or my loved ones.
Andrew Stuttaford writes:
Ramesh, you say this: “nobody here has proposed to prohibit—as these anti-antis go on to suggest—all types of genetic enhancement. I don’t think anyone here has even suggested that all such interventions would be wrong, let alone that they should be illegal.”
True enough so far as the Corner is concerned, but, in an age when a man such as Leon Kass is given such prominence by the administration, that is not enough to make the case that anti-anti-eugenicists are running with a “straw man.”
Here’s just a sample of what Kass is saying, and it’s not good news for anyone who, like me, believes in dodging the coffin for a while longer:
What if everybody lived life to the hilt, even as they approached an ever-receding age of death in a body that looked and functioned – let's not be too greedy – like that of a thirty year old? Would it be good if each and all of us lived like light bulbs, burning as brightly from beginning to end, but then popping off without warning, leaving those around us suddenly in the dark? Or is it perhaps better that there be a shape to life, everything in its due season, the shape also written, as it were, into the wrinkles of our bodies that live it? What would the relations between the generations be like if there never came a point at which a son surpassed his father in strength or vigor? What incentive would there be for the old to make way for the young, if the old slowed down but little and had no reason to think of retiring – if Michael could play until he were not forty but eighty? And might not even a moderate prolongation of life span with vigor lead to a prolongation in the young of functional immaturity – of the sort that has arguably already accompanied the great increase in average life expectancy experienced in the past century? One cannot think of enhancing the vitality of the old without retarding the maturation of the young.
I have tried to make a rational case for the blessings of finitude in my essay, "L'Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?" – the penultimate chapter of my book, Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity. I suggest there that living with our finitude is the condition of the possibility of many of the best things in human life: engagement, seriousness, a taste for beauty, the possibility of virtue, the ties born of procreation, the quest for meaning. Though the arguments are made against the case for immortality, they have weight also against even more modest prolongations of the maximum lifespan, especially in good health, that would permit us to live as if there were always tomorrow. In what I take to be the most important argument of that essay, I argue that the pursuit of perfect bodies and further life-extension will deflect us from realizing more fully the aspirations to which our lives naturally point, from living well rather than merely staying alive. And I argue that a concern with one's own improving agelessness is finally incompatible with accepting the need for procreation and human renewal: a world of longevity is increasingly a world hostile to children...To sum up: I have tried to make a case for finitude and even graceful decline of bodily powers. And I have tried to make a case for genuine human happiness, with satisfaction as the bloom that graces unimpeded, soul-exercising activity. The first argument resonates with Homeric and Hebraic intuitions; the second resonates with the Greek philosophers. One would like to think that they might even be connectable, that the idea of genuine human flourishing is rooted in aspirations born of the kinds of deficiencies that come from having limited and imperfect bodies. To pursue this possibility is work for another day.
Let me suggest, then, that a flourishing human life is not a life lived with an ageless body or untroubled soul, but rather a life lived in rhythmned time, mindful of time's limits, appreciative of each season and filled first of all with those intimate human relations that are ours only because we are born, age, replace ourselves, decline, and die – and know it. It is a life of aspiration, made possible by and borne of experienced lack, of the disproportion between the transcendent longings of the soul and the limited capacities of our bodies and minds. It is a life that stretches towards some fulfillment to which our natural human soul has been oriented, and, unless we extirpate the source, will always be oriented. It is a life not of better genes and enhancing chemicals but of love and friendship, song and dance, speech and deed, working and learning, revering and worshipping. The pursuit of an ageless body is finally a distraction and a deformation. The pursuit of an untroubled and self-satisfied soul is deadly to desire. Finitude recognized spurs aspiration. Fine aspiration acted upon is itself the core of happiness. Not the agelessness of the body nor the contentment of the soul nor even the list of external achievement and accomplishments of life, but the engaged and energetic being-at-work of what nature uniquely gave to us is what we need to treasure and defend against the devilish promise of technological perfection.
If Kass was merely a solitary crank, comments such as these could, as they should, be simply ignored, but he’s not. He’s influential, he has the ear of the White House, and he is taking aim at your medical future.
He is not a straw man.
NEW — 1/5/07, 5:30 —— Ramesh Ponnuru writes:
Andrew, where exactly in that passage from Kass did he describe all possible life-extending interventions as wrong, or say that they should all be illegal? Besides, most of what he's talking about wouldn't be eugenic interventions anyway. So, yup, it's a strawman.
Derbyshire's comments are almost purely rhetorical. "We are the masters of government, not its slaves." Nice to hear. Never denied it.
To return to the actual topics in dispute: 1) The fact remains that Derbyshire leans heavily on the inevitability of eugenics when dismissing arguments against some types of it, while dismissing arguments for the inevitability of governmental eugenics for no particular reason. 2) Derbyshire made the familiar (though absurd) suggestion that anyone who is concerned that some types of eugenics can instrumentalize human life should be opposed to free choice in mate selection; I rebutted the idea; once again, he says nothing in response.
